What is a Credit Reporting Agency?

A credit reporting agency (CRA) is a company that collects information from various sources and provides consumer credit information on individual consumers for a variety of uses. This helps lenders assess credit worthiness, the ability to pay back a loan, and can affect the interest rate and other terms of a loan. Credit reporting agencies [...]

What do I do if I am a victim of identity theft?

Is the question a girl asked me in my office today. So I decided this would be as good a time as ever to blog about identity theft, and maybe kill two birds with one stone. Identity theft is a serious crime. It occurs when your personal information is stolen and used without your knowledge to [...]

How Can Debt Collectors Gather Information On You? Why Should I Care?

The area of the law that governs how debt collectors can collect information on you is called “Acquisition of Location.”  This law limits the tactics of debt collectors, but you should still be aware of what they are doing behind the scenes. Here is what the law says: Any debt collector communicating with any person other than [...]

What is a credit score?

A credit score is a number based on a statistical analysis of a person’s credit file. This score represents the creditworthiness of that person, which is the perceived likelihood that the person will pay debts in a timely manner. A credit score is primarily based on credit report information. Lenders use this score to evaluate [...]

How to get a free copy of your credit report.

The first thing you will need to do is obtain a copy of your personal credit report from all three of the major credit report agencies. AnnualCreditReport.com is a centralized service for consumers to request free annual credit reports. It was created by the three nationwide consumer credit reporting companies – Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. [...]